Yahoo just published a blog post confirming yesterday's reports that it plans to buy Xoopit, the startup that adds social and media-sharing tools to email .
What's the reasoning? Well, if Yahoo's post is to be believed, this deal is all about photos:
With the integration of Xoopit’s platform technology and capabilities, the task of sending photos via email will be as easy as it should be and sharing photo albums with friends and family members will also be a cinch. You’ll be able to share your pictures among a group of friends or family like never before – combining pictures from numerous sources into a single album for a private group to view. And soon your inbox will become an organized photo index as well. Just imagine having a tool that collects all the photos you’ve sent and received over the years into that scrapbook you’ve never had time to assemble.
In short, Xoopit will bring phenomenal photo organization , improved photo sharing , and the serendipity of discovering forgotten photos to Yahoo! Mail.
It's a little disappointing that Yahoo sounds like it's only interested in Xoopit's photo-related features -- I'd think there's an opportunity beyond photos for Yahoo to use Xoopit's tools for bringing social information into the inbox, and allowing you to send media and updates form your inbox to your social networks. But maybe Yahoo is just keeping mum for now on future feature announcements.
Regarding the acquisition price, Yahoo isn't commenting, but it isn't denying the $20 million price that BoomTown reported (Xoopit raised a total of $6.5 million from Foundation Capital and Accel partners). And as for Gmail users, Yahoo says it will continue to support the Xoopit Firefox plugin and the Xoopit.com web application for Gmail, though I'd surprised if the company puts much energy into adding new features.